Kazimierz Sichulski
1879 - 1942

Sichulski was born to a family of the intelligentsia. From 1900 to 1908, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków where he studied under the supervision of Józef Mehoffer, Leon Wyczółkowski and Stanisław Wyspiański. He then continued his art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna with Anton von Kenner. Sichulski traveled extensively, visiting among other places, Munich, Dresden, Florence as well as Paris where he attended the Académie Colarossi. He also traveled to the Huculszczyzna region in East Carpathians. During World War I he served in the Polish Legions.

Sichulski was a member of the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka" and the Hagenbund in Vienna. He was a professor at the School of Decorative Arts and Crafts in Lvov beginning in 1920 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków beginning in 1930.

He contributed to Kraków's satirical magazine Liberum Veto (from 1903) and co-founded the cabaret "Zielony Balonik" ("The Green Balloon") beginning in 1905.

The artist painted mainly genre scenes of the East Carpathian region, landscapes, still lifes, historical compositions and, rarely, portraits. He cultivated the decorative arts: painting murals, designing frescoes and stained-glass windows, as well as interior design and architecture. He was a recognized caricaturist as a result of authoring allegorical portrait-caricatures of famous Polish painters, poets and collectors. He painted in rich colors and used large, flat spots surrounded with diluted contours. In the 1920s, his work conformed to a convention that employed historical stylistic patterns. When analyzing Sichulski's work, Ewa Houszka wrote of the artist: "A peculiar intellectual flexibility, curiosity of the world, a need for change, versatility, and more or less consciously realized synthesis of the arts, all of which causes another, extremely different fascination to appear along side the East Carpathian 'enchantment,' which will involve the artist in almost equal measure. It is the cabaret. [...] The same kind of humor as there used to be found at "Zielony Balonik"; stinging, and politically indifferent, directed exclusively ad personam, will be the closest to him from then on. At this time there will be revealed an inclination toward a manner of working that is rapid and effective but often on the brink of superficiality. A specific kind of eclecticism, a need to accumulate experiences, impressions and styles appears to be one of the essential traits of Sichulski's creative personality" (see Houszka 1944).

He exhibited regularly at both the Kraków and Lvov Patron Societies of Fine Arts, at the Krywult and Garlinski Salons in Warsaw and the General Nationwide Exhibition in Poznań (1929), where he received a gold medal. He participated in international exhibitions: Venice (1907, 1910, 1914, 1932), Rome (1911, 1934), Berlin (1914, 1937), Paris (1923, 1930, 1931), Budapest (1926), Pittsburgh (1926), Helsinki and Stockholm (1927).

-- Anna Król

Works in the collection: